BRENTWOOD — Exeter Hospital is asking a judge to prevent lawyers representing victims of the hepatitis C outbreak from sharing information they receive from the hospital with the public.

The hospital filed for a protective order in Rockingham County Superior Court on Monday — the same day it was scheduled to respond to requests for thousands of pages of documents concerning the hepatitis C outbreak.

The hospital has collected more than 250,000 pages of material that could be included in the discovery requests, according to its court motion. Medical records of patients linked to the outbreak alone comprise more than 41,000 pages.

The hospital is proposing that some of the material being requested by attorneys should stay open to public disclosure, while other information should remain confidential. The request cites a desire to protect staff identified in the documents and to prevent the information from being disbursed to the media. The hospital contends that media coverage of the hepatitis C outbreak has provoked public criticism and threats against Exeter Hospital and its staff.

The hospital is facing litigation from as many as 26 of the 32 patients linked with the hepatitis C outbreak. David Kwiatkowski, a former hospital employee, was arrested last year and accused of spreading the disease to the infected patients in the course of abusing hospital drugs. He denies the charges.

Since the events at Exeter Hospital came to light, hospital staff have faced threats online and in public, according to the hospital’s recent motion. In particular, a message posted online in August 2012 on the website of a New Hampshire news outlet was forwarded to the FBI for investigation.

Individual employees have also been confronted by members of the public in the community, according to the petition. On one occasion, an employee who was still wearing his hospital badge was accosted with “angry and derogatory remarks” inside a store after leaving work, the motion states.

In response, the hospital has undergone a security and safety audit, and it has increased the “visible presence” of security officers, according to court documents. Employees of the cardiac catheterization laboratory, where Kwiatkowski worked, have also received parking spots closer to the building.

The hospital argues that exposing the names of employees through the disclosure to the public of discovery materials would lead to increased anxiety and fear among employees.

“The confidentiality of certain designated information is imperative given the extraordinarily intense media coverage of these cases, safety concerns relating to hospital employees, and the vast amount of sensitive, confidential, nonpublic information subject to discovery,” the motion states.

The hospital also argues that attorneys representing the victims have attempted to sway public opinion through the media, and that the phenomenon would continue if the information is not kept confidential. Attorneys “may be tempted to employ the media to try Exeter Hospital in the court of public opinion before (or perhaps instead of) trying Exeter Hospital in a court of law,” reads a memorandum attached to the hospital’s request.

The hospital’s attorneys have singled out Concord attorney Peter McGrath. McGrath has been “unusually vocal” in the media throughout the case, the memo states. It cites quotations attributed to McGrath in numerous newspaper articles, including remarks he provided to Foster’s Daily Democrat last year.

In an August 2012 article, McGrath was quoted saying that it is “shocking how careless it appears that Exeter Hospital was, and that maybe other hospitals were.”

Without a court order protecting the information the hospital is set to disclose, attorneys representing the hepatitis C victims “could be tempted to use the press, broadcast media, and the Internet to sensationalize selective information,” according to the hospital.

Releasing the documents publicly is also likely to taint the perceptions of the jury pool in the civil actions, and in the pending criminal case, according to the hospital.

“This Court should grant a Protective Order for no other reason than to protect the fair trial rights of the defendants named in these civil and criminal cases,” the memorandum states.

Manchester Attorney Mark Abramson, who is representing 13 hepatitis C victims, filed a preliminary statement this week objecting to the hospital’s request for a protective order.

Abramson and Jared R. Green, another attorney at the law firm of Abramson, Brown & Dugan, characterized the hospital’s request as a “tactical effort” to force the hepatitis C victims to accept an “extraordinarily broad blanket protective order.” If the order is granted, the hospital will be able to unilaterally designate documents and testimony as being confidential, they contend.

The hospital’s actions demonstrate that it is “determined to prevent public disclosure of the facts that led to this public health crisis and that it will do whatever is necessary to fulfill that goal,” according to the attorneys.

The next court date for the civil proceedings is March 29. A consolidated discovery status conference is scheduled to take place in Rockingham County Superior Court at that time.